For Now
by centreoftheselights
Summary: What happened to Leslie after Darkest Mercy? One-shot.


Leslie was getting used to it.

She shouldn't be.

She hadn't meant to come back. Even though a part of her had never stopped wanting it, there had been too many good reasons to stay away.

But then some of the reasons vanished, and it turned out that nothing else mattered any more.

She had wanted to create her own life – a _mortal_ life.

But she had also – then and now, always and forever – wanted them.

So she kept returning, time and time again, week after week, to Huntsdale, the Dark Court, and the men she loved.

_Relapse_.

Wasn't that the word for it? She was falling back into habits she had been trying so hard to break. She knew the dangers, but she was still heading back down the same road…

But things were different now.

She knew that was the stupid kind of thing addicts said, but it really wasn't like last time. Last time, it had been about losing. She had lost her freedom. She had lost control. She had lost herself.

This time, she didn't feel like she was losing anything. She was _gaining_ something, uncovering new things every day: the sight of Niall's smile. The touch of Irial's skin. A night of peaceful dreams.

She was going into it with her eyes open, making a choice – and if she chose, she could leave it all behind. If she stopped coming, they would not follow her. She knew, whatever she said, the Dark Court would always be watching her – but whether or not she wished to see them in return was within her power.

If she wanted to, she could give it all up. But she didn't want to.

She was happy.

Not numb, or coping, but honestly _happy_ all the time – so unbearably happy that she was constantly terrified that something was going to go wrong and ruin it all.

They were happy together.

And when the Dark King was happy, the Court was too. Leslie had long since given up pretending that she felt no allegiance or affection to the Court she spent an increasing amount of her life within. She knew most of the faeries there by name. She wanted them to be happy, and the Court to be well – and, for the time being, it was.

It wasn't as though she had forgotten the other face of the Court. Niall and Irial fought sometimes, a stupid argument about whose turn it was to do the washing up transforming suddenly into a flashing dance of steel her eyes could barely follow. Leslie could never bring herself to look away when that happened, but always froze, watching spellbound. A part of her was terrified that one wrong move would devastate all three of them beyond repair.

Another part of her longed to join the dance as an equal, sharing this part of them as she did every other.

Perhaps…

Niall had come to her, months ago, and told her about the new Winter King.

"But I thought Keenan was mortal now…?"

"He was. But he's not any more."

He hadn't said any more than that, hadn't pushed her down the train of thought which naturally followed. She had always known that this couldn't last forever, that one day she would grow old and they would still seem young – that they would live on long after she had died.

But maybe –

Maybe that didn't have to be true.

The thought of it – of making that kind of decision, of saying 'forever' and meaning it – scared her, but not enough to keep her away. There were things she needed to do first, of course. She had promised herself she would at least finish university before making any kind of decision.

Leslie was currently trying not to notice that her final exam was less than a year away, and that she had not yet renewed her lease beyond then.

Not so long ago, she wouldn't even have considered it. She thought that she wanted a normal life – that she needed a normal life to ever be happy. But then, all that had changed.

Irial had died.

She hadn't realised until that moment how much she still relied upon him – not to be there for her in person, but just to exist, somewhere. It was only when she thought he was gone that she saw that she could never put the world of faeries behind her. It was a part of her now – Niall and Irial were both so deep a part of her that she could never get rid of them.

And then they had a second chance – a _first_ chance, really, because for the first time the three of them could be together, and her definition of everything she wanted had been irreversibly changed.

At first, she had resisted, staying away as much as she dared. But the more time the passed, the harder it was to remember why she had ever wanted anything else. So much had changed. It was too easy to tell herself that the only reason she had wanted a mortal life was because she had never known what the faerie world had to offer her.

A part of Leslie knew that she still wasn't ready, that she would still hesitate at the thought.

But she kept coming back, and every time she grew a little more certain.

She had all the time in the world. Nothing had to change.

She could keep on being happy.

For now.


End file.
